Yes, readers, it's that time of year again. Time to remember our favorite moments of the year in tech. No, we don't mean the debut of Windows 7. Or the arrival of the iPhone 3GS. We mean that moment when Vladimir Putin bitchslapped Michael Dell. Or when Eric Schmidt officially turned Google into public enemy number one.
Here's …

Shame.

App store

The policies at the app store are enough to give 'ol Steve-o the Stalin nickname, in my opinion. If he can't sort that shit out, he's a major asshole. Heck, I know people that refer to the app store bureaucracy as "the politburo".

Ehhhhhhhhh

Miss the point, much?

Surmising... The point about Stalin was not about means, but motivation and ends - to neutralize all potential challengers to himself and his utopian ideal - and frighten the rest - while keeping all believing that he was an infallible demi (semi?) god.

so...

If you think that comparisons of a guy who owns a technology company with a guy responsible for millions of deaths is hyperbole and kind of offensive then you're a fanboy? I like that definition, I think it really works.

@AC - the best

No, I'm not forgetting Psystar.

[ I'm guessing you typo'd Psystar, rather than that you're nominating the ATM/payphone rental business that was recently accused of fraud by its investors. If there's another Paystar, google aint showing it to me.]

They may have been a bunch of no-hopers, useless chancers pathetically kidding themselves that they could "get away with it" by coming up with some sub-dog-ate-my-homework-level excuse in court, but that's really just a pretty ordinary workaday combination of the standard human foibles of greed and stupidity; what they're attempting to do, however - manufacture cheap clone computers - is fundamentally a rational and coherent thing to attempt to do: sane. Had they succeeded, they would now have a real business manufacturing and selling computers, and be earning money from it. They were trying to do something sensible, but went a stupid way about it.

Steorn have a similar degree of business spivviness and outright shonkery, but what makes them special is the fact that the thing at the center of it - the thing for which they're going to all this trouble - is fundamentally insane looony gaga deedle-deedle-queep pfrrbbbbblbbbllbblt *raspberry* nonsense. Had they succeeded, they would still have *nothing*. They were trying to do something completely beyond and below pointless, something that was utterly not worth doing at all in the first place - *and* they went a stupid way about doing it. And they kept on and on at it, and are still trying even as we speak, having just last week launched /yet another/ model of perpetual motion machine. (This one even comes with a battery attached to keep it turning, brillant! Who but a genius could have thought of such a simple way of solving the problems that all the earlier models showed?) So they aren't just trying to do something impossible, they are going about it a stupid way, and on top of that they are showing persistence and endurance in the face of all the observable facts about reality that goes way far beyond and above the call of duty.

Of course you love Microsoft

What about...

Serving suggestion

I can see this thread is going to be full of "what about...?" and "aren't you forgetting...?".

So, what about asking us first next year? (Well, not me, specifically, as I have the memory capacity of a politician, but...) Then pick the best out of that lot. After all, you Regsters are few, and we are legion and many hands spoil the... oh well, you know what I mean.

Those with nothing to hide can't always see into the future.

http://www.stockmaven.com/ibmstory.htm

"This approach appears to have been used in the Netherlands when small-area tabulations of population data by religion from the 1930 Dutch census made up one of several data sources used in the development of the so-called 'dot maps' of Amsterdam," he says. "These maps, which showed areas of the city where the density of the Jewish population was the highest, were used in planning Nazi-inspired attacks on some of these neighborhoods in February 1941."

It's not just Amazon...

I have an XM Satellite radio (North America). A few weeks ago there was a message on the screen that said something to the effect that the Terms and Conditions had changed, and they were remotely disabling some features associated with accessing and organizing recorded tracks. When I checked my radio's menu, some features had indeed disappeared. I could no longer access any recorded tracks except those few that just happened to be in a play list. Well, to say the least, I was utterly shocked. There had never been so much as a hint in the public domain that they had the capability to disable features in the absence of a firmware update. Thankfully, just as I was considering my legal options, the features mysteriously returned. Must have just been a glitch. But this strange little glitch revealed that XM Satellite radio has an ability to disable key hardware features.

I wonder if they realize the unintended consequences if they ever dare to activate that remote disabling of key hardware features again?

Missing ones?

I reckon the Phorm (and others) story as well as The Pirate Bay (and others) thing will have much, much more impact in the future than any of the ones you cited, while being very funny too (both Kent Ertugrul and Peter Sunde are very good at this shooty-footy game; the comparison stops there though).